All the fun of the Royal Show in Hastings. Options are still being considered for 2020. Photo / File
All the fun of the Royal Show in Hastings. Options are still being considered for 2020. Photo / File
Royal New Zealand Show host the Hawke's Bay A & P Society is battling on, determined to stage a show in Hastings this year, despite an early decision in Christchurch to cancel the South Island's biggest show.
The cancellation of the New Zealand Agricultural Show, otherwise known as the CanterburyShow, which was to have been held on November 11-13, was announced on Friday, with its A & P society saying it didn't want to risk going bankrupt.
But Hawke's Bay A & P general manager Sally Jackson says the Royal Show is still scheduled to go ahead at Showgrounds Hawke's Bay Tomoana on October 21-23, with a target of 30,000 people through the gates.
That is one of four options for the show which, like the Canterbury show, dates back almost 160 years.
The other options being formulated, depending on the alert levels of the Covid-19 crisis, are a smaller-scale "provincial" show, a show open only to competition classes and their exhibitors, and the least palatable, no show at all.
"We are absolutely committed to putting on an event of some sort," Jackson said. "There's a huge legacy, but the committee also wouldn't want to be the committee that put the society into bankruptcy."
Central Hawke's Bay A & P society president David Poulson said his committee was still planning for its show in Waipukurau to go ahead on November 12-14 while Hawke's Bay's other two annual A & P shows are scheduled to go ahead in Wairoa and Dannevirke in January and February.
